Portable digital cameras have become miniaturized, and are becoming increasingly wide spread. Known mobile phone devices already have built in cameras, and picture messaging between mobile phones is an increasingly wide spread technology.
Further, wearable cameras are known, and have the potential for becoming widely used consumer products in the future.
For some persons, being included in photographs or picture messages when in public places has nuisance effect. Increasing usage of portable camera devices means that the privacy issue of capturing of images of subjects who would prefer not to be photographed has increased. Because portable cameras are small and are likely to be unseen by a subject, persons generally cannot choose to avoid being in the field of view of a small portable camera and are likely to have their pictures taken without their knowledge or consent.
The issue of privacy in relation to cameras is well known. Civil liberties organizations campaign for the right for people not to be photographed or videoed without their consent. However, with the widespread use of security cameras and other hand held portable camera devices, maintaining privacy from being photographed or videoed is becoming more difficult. Some security companies market their products as ‘privacy friendly’ because they are supposed to retain only images containing faces of known individuals, typically, potential or actual criminals. In ‘Privacy issues of wearable camera's—v—surveillance cameras’ by Steve Mann—HTTP//wearcam.org, 1995, it is suggested that security camera or wearable cameras should be made visible, and that a wearable camera should have a visual indicator that it is active for capturing an image. This does not offer actual privacy to individuals within the vicinity of the camera, but rather offers a chance to ‘escape’ from the field of view from a camera.
JP 10031265 discloses a device for preventing stealthy photographing in which a remote control receiver remotely controls a camera. The remote control receiver issues a warning sound when a camera captures an image. This does not prevent capture of a person's image, but rather alerts a person that a picture has been or could be taken.
Further, there are known security systems which are able to detect and identify faces of known criminals from security video footage, such as those available from Identix, and Viisage, for example the known FaceFINDER product.
US 20020039447 discloses a system for indexing, storage and retrieval of digital images, whereby photographs are sorted according to who is in a photograph, through face recognition algorithms.
US 20010016820 discloses a face identification system, whereby faces are removed from a memory device, having been identified.
JP 2001235812 discloses an image processing method and apparatus having a digital processing device with a masking pattern which can be superimposed on a portion of an image for obscuring that portion of the image. Control of the masking process lies with the operator of the photographic processing device. A person whose image has been captured by the device has no control over the processing of the image or whether the image can be captured or not.
The Imageld company www.imagelD.com has a known product, whereby a user wears a tag. The tags are recognized by cameras and used to sort out images of people. The product recognizes and reads a set of markings within an image, and then sorts and stores matching identification codes in a database.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,399 discloses a privacy mode for cameras and camcorders. Images of persons' faces recorded on a camera or camcorder are detected and obscured. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,399 the person whose image is being captured has no control over whether a privacy mode of a camera or camcorder apparatus is set or not. Instead, an operator of the camera/camcorder determines the privacy mode. Therefore, privacy is not in the control of a person whose image is being captured.
JP 2001313006, discloses a method and apparatus in which a person who does not wish to be photographed carried a portable device which emits infra-red light which ‘floods’ a sensor or film of a camera, thereby blanking the image. However, the method disclosed in JP 2001313006 disables image capture completely and inhibits all images being taken, within range of the device.